MUSCATINE, Iowa — Twenty-seven years start to wash away when Betty Holzhauer rocks the ocean drum on her lap.

The 87-year-old’s eyes glass over and she chokes up as she listens to the lyrics of the song and plays along.

“We sat on the beach for hours and hours, and listened to the waves roll by,” sings Amy Kobb, a music therapist from Iowa Hospice.

Kobb wrote “Daytona Beach Memories” for Holzhauer, a lung fibrosis patient, last month after the ocean drum reminded her of family vacations.

“I think actually that’s when it started bringing all those memories back,” Holzhauer said, tapping her fingers on the large flat drum filled with hundreds of tiny metal beads.

The song reflects Holzhauer’s memories of staring at the stars and riding a tandem bike with her late husband, George, when they rented a house in Daytona Beach, Fla.

Another line describes how George, who died after 39 years of marriage in 1982 from complications of open heart surgery, would “go down to the ocean, jump right into the waves.”

The song for Holzhauer was the first Kobb wrote for any of the approximately 40 Hospice patients she visits in 22 eastern Iowa counties.

“You just gave me the right inspiration to write it,” she told Holzhauer.

Kobb, 23, started working for Iowa Hospice after graduating in December 2008 from the University of Michigan with a degree in music therapy.

She is one of three music therapists who provide the service in the 88 counties served by Iowa Hospice. The organization, which helps comfort terminally ill patients, has offered music therapy since the first office opened in Johnston in June 2005.

More than 60 percent of Hospice patients in the Muscatine area now receive music therapy to promote physical and mental well-being, said branch director Peggy Swails.

Kobb started working with Holzhauer in February at Bickford Cottage, where she sees one other assisted-living resident.

Holzhauer recalled the first time Kobb performed the song lyrics to music on her guitar. 

“I cried and cried. It was so beautiful,” Holzhauer said.

Kobb made a CD of the song for Holzhauer, and performed it live for Holzhauer’s son George, 60, when he visited from Arizona.

Holzhauer said she was at first leery when the director of Bickford Cottage, suggested Hospice services.

“I thought, ‘Boy, I must be worse off than I thought,’” joked Holzhauer, who has lived a decade past her four-year prognosis.

She admits now she had the wrong impression of the organization as only “holding the hands” of the dying.

“They do everything to make your life comfortable and happy,” she said.

For Holzhauer, that means remembering her life with the humorous man she met walking to work.

“I thought he was real cute and had a nice car,” she said. When he offered her a ride, she replied, “Oh, I sure would.”

“But the one thing I remember most,” go the lyrics to her song, “It’s written on my brain, is our summer vacations together in Florida.”